


Through the Looking Glass

by novemberlite



Series: through the looking glass [1]
Category: Merlin - Fandom
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Dark, Drama, Dubious Consent, M/M, Porn With Plot, Sexual Slavery, arthur has a beard, king!arthur, merlin's misplaced his timeline, smut happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:38:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novemberlite/pseuds/novemberlite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur finds a curious new plaything, and Merlin finds himself in a world that isn't quite his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Looking Glass

He says his name is Will. 

Arthur doesn’t believe him, and isn’t sure why. There’s no telltale shift of his eyes, no quickened breath that gives away his lie. It is a common name, fit for a common boy – nothing sets him apart from the dozens, hundreds of peasants that come to plead their case before Arthur every day. His clothes are as worn and face as dirty, the shape of his muddy footprints no different from countless others that have marked this floor. There is nothing extraordinary about him at all.

Except for the way he meets Arthur’s eyes. 

The tilt of his chin is proud, but not insolent, and that is the only thing that saves him from being lashed. He is silent until Arthur commands him to speak, but not in reverence; his back does not bow, even as he kneels. He says little and means even less, clipped answers that have Arthur’s hand itching to strike his face. His skin is pale underneath the grime and Arthur is tempted to adorn it with a bruise, or several. 

He resists, and tells himself it isn’t worth sullying his hand even as he wonders if the sharp crack of his palm would be accompanied by a cry – what it might sound like torn, unwilling, from the boy’s throat. It would give him no little satisfaction to see that pursed mouth slacken with shock, the bloom of colour on his cheek, but Arthur resists, because. 

There is something about him. Something about the way his mouth shapes two words and his eyes two thousand, the way they flicker but never away, something in the way he says _my liege_ and Arthur hears censure – something. Something he can’t quite put his finger on. 

His voice is low for how young he looks, rough around the edges. Arthur wonders what it might sound like with the boy’s mouth pressed against his ear, if secrets would stir fine hairs instead of breath. The thought makes his cock swell and Arthur is unsurprised but no less intrigued; lust is not what has him mapping out the boy’s face, trying to see confessions in laugh lines. 

Arthur is not a man ruled by desire; no king could afford to be. He indulges himself in pleasures of the flesh only because he has no reason not to, but the heat clawing at his insides now is nothing less than a demand. The spread of his legs puts the boy between them in his line of vision and Arthur’s cock throbs, urgent. He can see himself gripping the boy’s hair and tugging him close, thinks he might resist for a moment, two, as Arthur presses him down onto his lap. Would he turn pliant, then, knowing his king’s intention, hoping to earn his favour? The set of his shoulders suggests nothing of the sort but then men prouder than he have begged Arthur for mercy, benediction, _more._

Arousal sharpens with every moment of deliberation and the edge of pain makes his breath quicken. His face gives nothing away; Arthur has known restraint since infancy and no boy, no matter how tempting, will cause him to lose his composure. He can hold off yet, stay tensed on his throne and refuse the heat between his legs – the court spares little attention for the complaints of common folk, and Arthur wants to see how long the boy can kneel before he allows his shoulders to slump – but Arthur is not an idle king, and there will be time for testing the boy’s limits, under the cover of darkness.

He sends him to the dungeons with a tilt of his head, revels in the slight widening of curiously blue eyes before they narrow. He is jailed due to an insufficient account, to be held in the dungeons until he is ready to confess. Arthur feels an inordinate amount of glee at the slight drop of the boy’s jaw; in truth, he hasn’t heard a word of his explanation, nothing of the carefully recited what-why-how. He isn’t even sure what the boy has been accused of, other than acting suspicious, but he needs no reason more to sentence him – he needs no reason at all. 

The rest of the day is measured by the pulse of blood pounding at his temples, his throat, his groin. It passes in a haze of half formed fantasies, thoughts on what responses he will invoke and secrets unearth, if the boy will break by the touch of his hands or the weight of his crown. His cock hangs heavy and full, and when sunset peaks, Arthur becomes too impatient to linger over food and the nonsensical chatter of nobles. 

The climb to his chambers stirs a pleasant burn in his thighs and Arthur deliberates over ordering the boy a bath, the thought of how long it would take making his cock throb angrily. He palms it through his breeches and hisses at the pressure. The silk that adorns his bed would not take kindly to being muddied but Arthur is swamped by want, the dam broken by promise and expectation both. 

It is the urgency, the near loss of control that forces him to step back and steel his countenance. He instructs a maidservant about the bath and avoids touching his erection as he takes a seat, grits his teeth and watches the door. The world narrows to this little corner of his chambers and the rapid beat of his heart and Arthur wonders how the first spark of desire propagated to this all consuming want. 

The thought would unsettle him had it gotten the chance, but the door opens as a frown pinches Arthur’s mouth, and then there is nothing beyond pale skin and wet curls. Fresh faced, the boy looks unbearably sweet, even with his mouth tightened into a white line, a nerve ticking in his jaw. Arthur doesn’t move for a few seconds – minutes – more, and neither does the boy, back resting against the door as gingerly as his eyes rest on Arthur’s face. 

His features are too sharp to be called plain and not sharp enough to be called handsome, but Arthur can tell the bow of his mouth will be generous around a moan, against his own. A lesser man would feel lightheaded at the possibilities but Arthur stands with conviction framing the line of his body and the boy’s throat constricts as he swallows, lashes fanning his cheeks.

Not handsome, no, Arthur thinks, but _pretty._ Undeniably pretty, with skin too fine to be a boy’s, the curve of his neck too delicate. Arthur traces it with a finger and then with his mouth, breathes in musk and youth. There is fear in the pulse against his teeth and the boy shudders when Arthur mouths at his jugular, at the scratch of his beard and sweep of his tongue.

Arthur finds the dip behind his ear as he works the tunic off of his slight frame. He bites at the lobe, tender clinch of teeth, and the boy’s hands flutter at his sides. He hasn’t made a sound but their breathing fills in the silence, aided by the rustle of cloth as Arthur bares him. The boy’s chest hitches on a breath when Arthur drags his eyes down the length of his body, from the limp fall of his wet hair to the jut of his cock, as slender and long as the rest of him. He’s flushed and leaking and Arthur wants to laugh – feels a smile curl his lips at the obvious evidence of arousal. 

The boy sees it, because his own eyes widen and the flush crawls to his chest, drawing Arthur’s attention to small, pink nipples. They pebble under his gaze and oh, Arthur wants to _devour_ this boy, take him apart piece by lovely little piece until the only name he knows is his king’s, until his world begins and ends with Arthur. 

A fine sheen of sweat coats his neck now, heady on Arthur’s tongue. He circles the boy with his mouth pressed to his throat, dragging his chin against too sensitive skin and relishing the little hitches of breath the friction produces. Arthur is territorial by nature but he has never been consumed so thoroughly by the need to mark, to burn and imprint and crawl his way under this boy’s skin, make him irrevocably his. It makes something tighten in his chest, or perhaps the cause is the arch of the boy’s shoulder blades, the stretch of skin over bone – the tremble he is trying to hide. 

Arthur presses his face against the boy’s back and holds back the urge to rub and lick, swathe the skin with saliva. There are other ways to scent him and Arthur’s cock jerks its agreement in his breeches, leaking profusely. His want to explore the dips and planes of the boy’s body is overridden by impatience – a vice Arthur was sure his father had cured him of in childhood – and he grips him by the hips without warning, rocking forward until the long lines of their bodies touch. 

The boy takes in a sharp breath and Arthur can see the edge of his lower lip curve when he bites it, when he drops his head back and succumbs to a heavy shudder. Arthur’s hands look large and imposing on his slender waist, and his stomach flutters when Arthur digs his nails into the ridge of bone, inches away from his straining cock. Arthur can’t remember the last time he wanted to suck at a man’s cock but his mouth is watering now, making a degrading notion seem unbearably appealing. He has to close his eyes at the thought of it before he shifts his hands up the boy’s body, a slow drag that prompts a startled gasp. 

He leads him to the bed with slow rolls of his hips, sees and feels his muscles clench at every step. The boy pauses at the foot of the bed and Arthur squeezes his waist, scrapes his nails against bone until he crawls onto it. His hands slip against the sheets and he spreads his knees to keep balance, the shadowed alcove between his legs too tempting for Arthur to resist. 

A choked noise escapes him when Arthur fits a hand over his balls, rolls them in his palm. His face is pressed into the pillow now and more muffled sounds escape; Arthur wonders what it is he is trying to keep him from hearing, what he fears might leave him in the throes of passion. He almost turns the boy onto his back so that he can track the devastation on his face, the slow cracks on his composure, but he’s waited too long and there’s no longer anything his body wants more than to fuck.

He moves to get the vial of oil and realizes with a start that he has removed neither cloak nor crown. A thrill shoots up his spine as the boy turns his head to the side and comes to the same conclusion, the slight widening of his eyes, the o of his bitten red mouth. Arthur undoes his breeches with one hand and tips oil onto the boy’s back with the other, watches him arch into an impossible curve when the oil slides between his cheeks, over his sides. 

The boy is panting now, fingers knotting the sheets. The plump bow of his lip is caught underneath a line of teeth and Arthur watches, enrapt, as his eyes squeeze shut when the first finger presses in. The flush is high on his cheeks and gets higher still when Arthur begins to pump, so much so that Arthur feels his own face heat in sympathy. The boy’s body clings sweetly to his fingers, hole tightening on the withdrawal, and if Arthur’s cock wasn’t full enough to burst he thinks he could spend hours like this, fingering him until he shivers apart.

His gut clenches at the thought and Arthur hisses as he slicks himself with the oil left pooled in the small of the boy’s back, dragging the head of his cock along his spine before fitting it against his hole. The first press and the boy moans, jerking Arthur’s attention back to his face. Reddened and sweaty, eyebrows drawn and chewing furiously on his lip – Arthur’s mind snags on _lovely_ and his cock agrees, rocking in slow, with little twists of his hips. 

Arthur registers another soft moan as he bottoms out, has to bite his tongue to keep from commanding the boy to speak lest the command turns into a plea. He is aware of the short grunts leaving his own mouth, the drawn out groans, the hisses of breath; Arthur isn’t a noisy lover but he likes to praise and taunt in equal parts, _aren’t you sweet,_ and _like that, do you?_ s both. He silences himself by will alone, vows that any sound that leaves him will be an echo of the boy’s, no more, no less. 

He would keep that vow like he does every other if the boy doesn’t begin to move, if his hips don’t twitch backwards, if he doesn’t tighten around Arthur and _keen_ – but he does and Arthur is a king but that doesn’t make him any less of a man. 

"Tell me your name," Arthur demands, hips stuttering as nails break skin, drawn to the memory of the boy’s grimy hands curled at his sides, his flashing eyes and stilted answers. "Your real name."

For a moment there’s no sound but that of their bodies, soft squelches where they join and part and join again. Arthur wonders if it didn’t come out too much of a query, if the boy has forgotten his place by Arthur’s lenience, if he realizes what it means to deny his sovereign. 

Arthur’s hands squeeze his hips and he thrusts hard, intending to bruise and cut and hurt. The beginnings of fury are a hazy film over his eyes, but then the boy speaks and Arthur looks up to see eyes wide open and gold by the firelight. 

"Merlin," he answers, and Arthur gasps it as he comes.


End file.
